He shielded his eyes as he took a tight bend too fast, then slammed on his brakes as a small, mustard-yellow–colored car raced toward him, careening down the middle of the road. He knew he should slow down but he wanted to get home and see Gemma before Sarah took her to nursery. The sun flashed through the tops of the trees, blinding Carl intermittently. The final notes of the last song faded away and were replaced with nothing. One minute there was the usual music interspersed with inane chatter and drivel, the next just silence. Must be something wrong with it, he decided.
Gemma, their perfect little girl, was costing them a fortune.ĭamn radio. He loved his family more than anything, but neither he nor Sarah had been prepared for the extra expense of having another mouth to feed. Never mind, he thought to himself as he tried to drink a cup of coffee with one hand, tune the radio with the other and still keep the van moving, being on twenty-four-hour call paid well, and Christ, did they need the money. He knew the maintenance contract inside out, better even than Carl's employers. Simpson-the wily bastard who ran the night shift there-was too tight to pay for new machinery and too smart to have his own men fix the problem when he could call someone else out.
He'd been there since just after four, fixing an insignificant repair which had hardly warranted him being called out in the middle of the night. The early morning sun was low on the horizon as he drove back from the Carter & Jameson factory just north of Billhampton. Carl Henshawe was over three-quarters of the way home before he realized anything had happened.
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